UK Sleepwalking Into a Surveillance State?

The UK's Interception of Communications CommissionerSir Paul Kennedy wrote in his annual report to Parliament that public bodies made 504,073 requests to access private emails and telephone records in the UK last year. That amounts to about 1,500 surveillance requests made by government authorities each day, or in different terms, one request for every 78 UK residents. Some 1,553 demands for communications data were made by 123 local authorities, although why was not explained in any detail by Sir Kennedy.

According a Reutersstory, each surveillance request allows the police, councils and the intelligence services to access data -- which includes telephone records, email and text message traffic -- but not the actual content of conversations or messages.